Best of Miami 2012 - Best Artists: The TM Sisters

Want access to our Best Of picks from your smartphone? Download our free Best Of app for the iPhone or Android phone from the App Store or Google Play. Don't forget to check out the full Best of Miami® 2012 issue June 12 online and June 14 in newsstands.

If you like this story, consider signing up for our email newsletters.

SUCCESS!

Distilling a Miami aesthetic down to a distinct essence is an Olympian undertaking. Our city beats with a rhythm that's electric and shape shifting. Languages and cultures collide in a Babylonian tapestry. Artists from Iceland to Chile call the Magic City their home. But then again, for Monica and Tasha Lopez De Victoria, who for the past decade have been collaborating as the TM Sisters, making the protean seem simple has been a calling card since they burst onto the scene. They gained international attention in 2005 with their video "Superpowers," featuring a cast of dozens of Miami's artists harnessing a bolt of homegrown energy and pitching it off to each other against a dazzling geometric blue and pink background reminiscent of a vibrant videogame. It went on to be featured in an exhibit that traveled across Europe. Not only did the video capture the metamorphosis underway on our art scene at the time, but also many of the colleagues with whom the TM Sisters collaborated on the project have gone on to represent the 305 on the international scene. The insatiably curious siblings are no strangers to experimenting with media. Their works oscillate from video to collage and from sprawling, interactive installations to ambitious performance pieces that reflect their love of South Florida with a unique techno-tropical vibe. Their "Whirl Crash Go!" production at Locust Projects in 2009 combined synchronized swimming and spandex-clad roller skaters with animated video projections, along with a musical score composed by Otto Von Schirach and costumes designed by Karelle Levy of Krelwear. The pulsating event transported viewers to a polychromatic universe of epic scope, nonstop action, and intense light and sound. Likewise, their multimedia opus "Shimmer," at the Adrienne Arsht Center, presented as part of Miami Made Festival 2012, scintillated the senses with their trademark multimedia experimentation while delivering a vision of Miami's clash of cultures, saturated neon lights, and a prismatic lightning bolt of life uniquely their own.